The First Thanksgiving in North America: Saint Augustine 1565

Happy Thanksgiving!

Even though Thanksgiving is a holiday we celebrate every year in North America, few north Americans actually know that it was celebrated for the first time in Saint Augustine, Florida. Most people believe it is a holiday associated with the puritans - pilgrim immigrants of the Plymouth area. But in reality, it was first celebrated by the Spanish of Florida 55 years before the pilgrims.

Fort San Marcos, completed in 1695, is a historical icon of colonial Saint Augustine, North Florida.

The Spanish discovered Florida around 1512, but did not formally or permanently settle it until Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded Saint Augustine in 1565. Of course, these first celebrations were not as we are too often taught in school.

Museums around the world, and especially in North America, often set aside special exhibitions to celebrate this holiday as part of our cultural heritage.

Sample of early diet including pigs, deer, and corn, excavated from early colonial Spanish St. Augustine on
display at FLMNH.

The Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville is celebrating by opening the doors of its newest exhibit "First Colony: Our Spanish Origins", based on artifacts of the early Spanish colony excavated by archeologists in the old town of Saint Augustine. The small village founded then was the place where the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1565 by Menendez de Aviles and his group of settlers. The artifacts showcased here are utilitarian wares used for alimentary purposes, including dinner plates, sauces, bottles, and large containers used to store and serve food.

Early bottles, and bottle bottoms showing maker marks.

The expo is small, but very well planned, mounted, and diverse: a real treat for those interested in early American history, and in Spanish colonial history. Here I showcase some of the artifacts on display. If you cant make the trip, visit the FLMNH website here or watch this YouTube video.

Pottery shards: parts of plates and saucer from archeological sites in Saint Augustine, Fl

With everything that is going on the world today, it is a great opportunity to put aside all ideological differences and rejoice in our intermittent existence. Look to our place in this amazing planet for what it is: a once in a lifetime opportunity not to be wasted by conflict.

In the realm of flowers, a perfumed land,

Girt by the sea, by soft winds fanned;

Ravaged by war in years grown old,

Its former glory a tale long told,

Stands the quaint old Spanish city.

The scene of many a hard-fought fight,

Of many a siege, when Spanish might

Was o'er the land: in its decay

It hath a beauty to live away,

That quaint old Spanish city.

Poems of Places

Saint Augustine Standard Guide (1885)

The Day of the Dead

In celebration of the Day of the Dead, here I post two allegorical gravitas.

The Day of the Dead, or Día de Muertos, is part of Mexican folkloric tradition that has spread into southwestern US and parts of Central America. Mainly it is a day to remember those that are no longer among us, no longer among the living. For that reason I have chosen two human remains, that up to 2002, laid forgotten in their cemetery, well beyond the rescue and the memory of those who knew them.

I hope that by placing them here they wont be forgotten; even if we can no longer know their names.

Matanzas City: Celebrating 322 years of Foundation

Modern map of the Cuban archipelago in the Caribbean Sea. Part of the Province of Matanzas is boxed.

The tercentennial city of Matanzas, located in the bay of Matanzas, northwestern Cuba (and the center location of many of my posts), celebrates today 322 years since its foundation, 523 since the rediscovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.

I want to celebrate this event by blogging a bit about the history of the city in which I was born and raised; a place that I love. I hope my enthusiasm rubs off, for to know Matanzas is to love her.

Plan of the City of Matanzas from 1837 showing the main urban center at the birth of the bay.
This plan was certainly one of the most detailed of its time.

Old Matanzas is located between the San Juan and Yumuri rivers. The city was founded out of a whim of protection in the fall of 1693. The bay that harbors the city had been known to the Spanish colonists and conquistadors since at least 1508, and much before to several cultures of Amerindians who inhabited the area for over 3 millennia. The bay was known as Guanima, with a prominent town called Yucayo during the latest period of Amerindian habitation.

Matanzas's Cathedral built in front of the place were the original foundational church was built in 1693. The photo looks North.

On the morning of October 12 of 1693, governor Severino de Manzaneda, the bishop Diego Evelino de Compostela set out to delimit what was going to be the extent of the city. Matanzas's planning and delimitation resulted in creating one of the most ordered cities of its time.

Liberty Park on the main square, showing off the glory of the Statue of Liberty
and that of our national figure Jose Marti.

The area was not unknown, however, to officials and merchants in Havana, or others in the Caribbean, for the nearby lands have been settled, inhabited, and used as contraband outposts since the early 16th century.  The Crown's want of control on illicit trading there, constantly on the rise since then and with frequent roaming of pirates culminating in the attack of Piet Heyn in 1628 later, finally incited its official foundation, but more as a measure of protection. Manzaneda, Cordova, and several other surveyors of the Crown had been visiting the bay since 1684 to scout out the specific areas whereupon to build the fort of San Severino, and where to place the church. Both structures would bring, ideally, a sense of security and seriousness to the enterprise for the soon to be Matanceros; immigrants from the Canary Islands.

Plan of Jose Fernandez Sotolongo dating to 1764, depicting the embryonic city already 71 years founded. The red
polygons are the inhabited quarters. The gray is delimited, but unused areas.

The city of Matanzas was formerly known as "La Atenas de Cuba", or the Athens of Cuba, due to its social and cultural growth during the 19th century, which was consequently fostered by great sugar boom of that era. Today is just "La Ciudad Dormida", or the "City that Sleeps". In my version, it is the Athens that Sleeps because Matanzas still retains a large, but latent, cultural and historically-rich ambiance, that to this day, characterize its people.

View of the bay and part of the city of Versalles and Matanzas from La Loma del Estero, a small hill that sets
the amphitheater that encases de city to the bay.

The recent creation of a Conservation Office, under the leadership of the city's first conservator Leonel P. Orozco, alongside the aid of the Office of the City's Historian attests to the national interest in reviving the protection and restoration of locally important monuments, and fostering a healthy interest in the city's local past.

Detail of one of the towers of the iconic Concord bridge, also known as the Jose Lacret Morlot
bridge, built by Spanish architect Pedro Celestino del Pandal and finalized in 1878.

We wish you happy 322 years Matanzas!


Note: Since this post was written, now a year ago, a colleague and I created a blog dedicated to the history and culture of Matanzas, written in Spanish, but equally visually rewarding for those interested. Visit San Carlos de Matanzas today!

Newly Discovered Cave Pictograph: Update

Hello everyone,

I have come to the conclusion that some of my latest posts have been a bit lengthy, but picturesque. I had hoped to flesh out more useful information regarding my research, guided by imagery, but due to new time constraints, I have resolved on doing shorter posts. These will continue to be informative nevertheless, but easier to digest. It will be better since I get easily distracted and digress. Henceforth, I plan for my posts to be sort of less informal updates and tidy bits of juicy information.

So, yes, right to the news. On my previous post about "Shaman or Monkey" pictograph, I blogged about the unexpectedly, but a nevertheless interesting discovery of line pictograph on Palenque Hill, in northwestern Cuba. My colleague and co-discoverer Leonel Perez-Orozco has recently divulged such discovery on the local and international press (such as Giron,  Prensa Latina, and Cuba Arqueologica), and hence I wanted to clarify several points.

Fig. 1: Pictograph of fine charcoal line patterns on the cave wall.

The pictographs are the dark charcoal lines in the upper center of figure 1. As of today, we are not sure who and when they were made. However, based on its form and make we think they were made by either aboriginals or maroons that took to the hills during the Spanish conquest of the island, which action has named the very same hill where the cave is located. That is the meaning of Palenque, originally a maroon stockade, a name that was later modified to mean a hideout for runaway slaves or native Indians.

If made by Amerindians, these were probably of hunter-gatherer groups that could have used the cave as ritual or hideout. But we have no evidence of either living activities or hideout at this point. Sadly, most of the piece have been erased by water that filters through the cave wall.

The little cave is apparently called Campamento Cave, or Camping Cave. We made this accidental discovery on our recent survey of this hill, which is an important component of the anticlinal Habana-Matanzas hill range, in northwestern Cuba. This pictograph is somewhat  important because thus far, this sort of evidence was lacking from the region, and it hints at what the name of the hill already suggested. Even though the harder evidence is wanting.

Stay tuned for more news!

Quotes of the Month

These are a few brainy quotes by some of the greatest minds. Indulge!

"If we knew what is what we are doing, it would not be called research. Would it?"

Albert Einstein

"No one undertakes research with the intention of winning a prize. It is for the joy of discovering something new" 

Stephen Hawking

"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose"

Zora Neale Hurston

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data" 

Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)

"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest"

Benjamin Franklin